Personal computers (“PCs”) and personal media players such as MP3 (Moving Pictures Expert Group, MPEG-1, audio layer 3) players, PDAs (personal digital assistants), mobile phones, smart phones, and similar devices typically enable users to interact with and consume media content such as music and video. Users typically utilize a graphical user interface (“GUI”) supported by a display screen that is incorporated into these devices in order to navigate among various menus to make selections of media content, control operations of the device, set preferences, and the like. The menus are organized in a hierarchical manner and the user will generally interact with user controls (e.g., buttons and the like) to move within a menu and jump to different menus to accomplish the desired functions such as finding media content items of interest and related contextual information to consume.
While many current GUIs perform satisfactorily, it continues to be a challenge for developers to design GUIs that are easily and efficiently used, and engage the user in way that enhances the overall user experience. In particular, as both PCs and personal media players get more onboard storage and support more features and functions, the GUIs needed to control them have often become larger and more complex to operate. For example, PCs and media players can store thousands of songs, videos, and photographs, play content from over the air radio stations, access content and data from on-line sources, and enable shared experiences through device-to-device connections. Navigating through such large volumes of content and controlling the user experience as desired can often mean working through long series of hierarchical menus in order to get to a particular piece of content or experience. The hierarchical menus are often non-intuitive and can be an obstacle in discovering content serendipitously.
Another common obstacle that users face when consuming media content is that related contextual materials must often be experienced in a disconnected manner. For example, if a user wants to check the biography of an actor in a program while watching it on television, the user will typically launch a web browser on a PC to check a website. Or, when listening to a favorite artist on the media player, the user will again use the PC to check the artist's website to get concert information, for example.
Accordingly, arrangements supporting media content and associated contextual information and experiences that are more seamless in operation and intuitive to use and which provide a user with a better overall experience when interacting with the player would be desirable.
This Background is provided to introduce a brief context for the Summary and Detailed Description that follow. This Background is not intended to be an aid in determining the scope of the claimed subject matter nor be viewed as limiting the claimed subject matter to implementations that solve any or all of the disadvantages or problems presented above.